[kwlug-disc] OT: SAS cables/controller cards (and Fibrechannel?)

Sat May 18 09:25:51 EDT 2019

Thanks Ron, I believe the Fibre channel arrays are probably wiped, but
it's been so long since we got those particular arrays that I'm not
entirely sure. The arrays came from a source I would expect would be
pretty concerned about data. That said we still wipe drives regardless
of what people tell us (for our own peace of mind). We held off trying
to wipe those particular drives since the control unit for the fibre
channel drives apparently has some software issues.

Paul, I thought I'd mention that we sprung for PartedMagic, so in
addition to dBan we've started using that for SSD's and the like.
(I've already put it on the PXE server).

If you happen to drop those off Ron just make sure you ask for either
Martin, Charles, Kirk, or Berleine [our IT dept] (Paul still does a
lot of work for us, but he's not often on site). The official address
is 58 Queen Street south. Computer Recycling has a door on the corner
of Queen and Charles street, directly across from Full Circle Foods
health store (Charles street). If you happen to have a bit of time I'd
be happy to show you the arrays.

We've definitely run into that time issue, we had a client that asked
for an 8 pass RCMP standard for a 1TB drive and that took a couple of
days. We haven't used PartedMagic a lot, but I hear it might be a bit
quicker than DBan. The price for a single license was really cheap,
something like $14.

Paul, really appreciate this as this is one of those priority things
that just always kept getting shelved dealing with the daily grind and
other projects!

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 4:48 PM Ron Singh <ronsingh149 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 4 things --
>
> 1 - can you give some idea of the storage capacity of the arrays? See, these arrays are loud as hell, suck a lot of juice($$$ to run) and if >8 years old, pretty low in capacity. Buying cables/cards to use them as storage devices for PCs/servers would not be cost-effective by any stretch.
>
> 2 - Fibre-stuff, though fast, can be spendy to get up and running as cables/cards are not cheap to come by or free for that matter. Most of the >8yo FC arrays were along the lines of 2tb-4tb of raw storage that sucks some 120w-150w depending on speeds of the HDDs. Those 10KRPM HDDs are power-hungry.
>
> 3 - I have some Intel and 3Ware 9650se-8 ML cards(PCI/e 8087-conn) that can be borrowed, I am sure I have the some short(18") 8087-8087 cables in hand too.  These are capable of 3Gbps SAS/SATA.
>
> In most cases, it is worthwhile popping the drives out and returning them to service in a desktop with a bunch of open bays and tossing the original cage. Again, limited storage to be gained as the world is all about 4TB HDDs and 1TB SSDs these days.
>
> 4  - The fact that you have drive arrays in this privacy-aware world is surprising. My IT shop regularly get some of this older stuff with the raid array scrubbed, but scrubbed poorly since an 8-drive 2.4tb(raw) array takes about 4 days to complete a 3-pass DOD-type scrub. We are tasked with destroying said array, we do that by drilling the hell out of the drives so that the platters become a mess of broken glassy bits.
>
> You are welcome to borrow as many as 4 cards from my local IT joint for up to 2 months if you feel they can be useful.
> I could bring them by 50 Queen(?) or wherever the arrays are residing.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ron Singh
>
>
>
> On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 1:31 AM Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:
>>
>> This is pretty off-topic, but I will ask anyways.
>>
>> I am doing a small project with Computer Recycling to sort through a
>> large number of drive arrays they have received. I am running into
>> trouble because we are missing cables and controller cards for some of
>> this hardware. I am wondering whether any of you have spares (or old
>> stuff) around that I could borrow for a while (or maybe that we could
>> purchase). We have thought about purchasing cables ourselves, but
>> cables are not cheap, and we don't know whether this equipment is any
>> good.
>>
>>
>>
>> I am not super-familiar with this world so I am probably saying stupid
>> things. Please forgive me and correct my misunderstandings.
>>
>> I am taking descriptions of ports here:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI#Connectors
>>
>> I have an IBM SR-BR10i (maybe a rebranded LSI SAS 3082E-R) RAID
>> controller card which might work for testing the drive arrays. It has
>> two ports which I think take in SFF-8087 connectors.  I do not know
>> for certain whether this card works and I do not know whether it is
>> sufficient to connect and test these drive arrays.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have a Dell MD 1000 that I think takes in an SFF-8470 connector (the
>> Infiniband one from the Wikipedia page), but I do not have any cable
>> with that end.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I have some IBM drive arrays that I am hoping to test. Most of them are
>> IBM exn3000 (alternatively: 2857-NAS) that I believe have QSFP ports.
>> We have some QSFP cables and I have one that I believe is SFF-8088 to
>> QSFP. But I do not think I can connect a SFF-8087 to a QSFP directly,
>> so I need an adaptor? I am not sure how this works. I do have one IBM
>> server that I have used to successfully detect the drive arrays, but
>> that is about as far as I can go, because the built-in RAID controller
>> is not well-supported by Linux any more.
>>
>> There are not good pictures of QSFP connectors, but here is the
>> wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QSFP
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We also have some oldish IBM drive arrays that have Fibrechannel
>> connectors. I have no idea whether I can make these work, or what I
>> would need to do so (I think I need big expensive proprietary IBM
>> controller that I cannot use without expensive proprietary software I
>> don't have). Maybe I can access those drives directly? They have
>> connectors that look like this:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibre_Channel_electrical_interface#40-pin_%22SCA-2%22_disk_connector
>>
>> In particular, here is somebody selling one of the models in the array
>> for some money:
>>
>> http://www.harddrivesdirect.com/product_info.php?products_id=456786_73P8017
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Anyways, if you have some of the cables/adaptors/cards/etc that I
>> would need to test this equipment then please get in touch. If you
>> know in particular what I should be looking to get in order to test it
>> that would be helpful too. Our goal is to evaluate some of this stuff
>> for internal use, but if for some reason you want to purchase it from
>> Computer Recycling (especially the Fibrechannel stuff) then we may be
>> able to make arrangements. In the worst case we will give up, strip
>> what we can and then e-waste the rest.
>>
>> - Paul
>>
>>
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-- 
Charles McColm
Computer Recycling: http://www.comprec.org
Fasteroids: http://www.fasteroids.ca
Twitter/Identica/Google+: @chaslinux